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November
2005
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'MD & Kid Fury' Tuesday 1st November saw a link-up in Oxford with Kid Fury, my former club MC and radio co-host, and a guy I collaborated closely with on just about everything from 1998 to 2001. The occasion was the imminent appearance of Volume 20 in my mix CD series, which is to feature a bonus disk consisting of all the best bits from the previous 19 volumes. To kick it off, I recorded a conversation between Fury and myself, reminiscing on the bits we remember, and focusing on his freestyle contributions in particular. The fact that we were recording it in my car next to a darkened row of garages drew a few stares, (and possibly an accusation or two of dogging), but ghetto style is the way it sometimes has to be! Thursday 3rd looked like being the last Bad Apple session at Three in Bristol – at least for the time being. Sadly, the venue has been caned by the opening of the city’s Oceana superclub. Fickle and disloyal clubbers have flocked there tempted by cheap booze and easy pulling opportunities, and this has inevitably taken its toll on Apple’s numbers. It’s been a great night with a really innovative music policy, but sadly this hasn’t been enough to save it. I made the best of what might have been the last session, a live drummer accompanying me throughout my set – another element that’s made this event such a standout. Another quality night bites the dust. After far too little sleep, I bombed off to Stansted Airport on Friday morning, en route to what promised to be a far more reliable gig. Since February, my debut appearance at Club Aquarius in Zagreb, Croatia, has battled with Mozambique for the accolade of 2005’s favourite gig in my mind.
'Aquarius, Zagreb' Zagreb was an absolute breath of fresh air; hip hop is enjoyed there with a zealous passion, and the club was full of real heads who allowed me to play exactly the sort of heavy and fast-moving set I love to drop, with no watering-down required.
'MD on DVD screen, Aquarius' Again, travel out and back was via Ljubljana in neighbouring Slovenia, considerably cheaper to to fly to than Zagreb itself, which has yet to reap the benefits of budget airlines like Easyjet and Ryanair. Croatia is poised to join the EU within the next couple of years, however, so that’s likely to change. I was picked up by Croatian Big Dog CEO Of All Things Hip Hop Phat Phillie, and we drove the two hours the or so over the border into Croatia. (Phillie is a living testament to the incredible global impact of hip hop; he learned to speak English through listening to hip hop tracks, and is now fluent!) The crowd at the lakeside Blackout Lounge were a little more fussy than on the previous occasion, but the gig was still inspiring, as any opportunity to drop the likes of Gang Starr, Nas and De La Soul to an appreciative crowd on a Friday night is to be relished! I got a great set of pictures for the Gallery section of the site. I also recorded my whole set, and an excerpt will be available to listen to on the News page in the very near future - if it’s not there already. After some post-set drinks in the ultra-lively backroom where all the drunk crew hangs out, I rolled back to my hotel at around 5.30am. What I really needed was a good rest. What I didn’t need was to be woken just three hours later by a construction crew undertaking renovation work throughout the hotel, in my case, in the next room! I find it incredible that a hotel thinks it’s still OK to sell rooms to customers in the full knowledge that this is going on – especially at the weekend. Even a move to a room on the ninth floor didn’t block the noise, and it was clear no more sleep was to be had. Quite rightly, Phillie applied some heavy complaining and managed to get the room at a suitably reduced rate. The rest of Saturday was swallowed up with the return trip – Zagreb to Ljubljana by road, Stansted by air, then Essex back to Oxfordshire by car. Wifey’s idea of a few evening hours together sadly went out of the window; there was just enough time to grab 90 minutes’ shut-eye at home. This wasn’t exactly aided by the constant explosion of fireworks outside, but the earplugs helped. With my schedule and sleep ‘patterns’, I find it virtually impossible to sleep without them.
'MD at Atlanta's, Northampton'
At midnight, I bombed up to Northampton for my 1-3am set at Atlantas. The venue was rammed and jumping, and this ended up being one of my more memorable and fulfilling sessions at the club, rounding off a pretty strong weekend’s action. As I’ve mentioned before, a travelling DJ’s bookings rarely follow any kind of consistent pattern; you just take what’s on offer while it’s there. As a result, the diary is often distinctly dry one minute, then absurdly convoluted the next. Wednesday 9th saw the start of what was scheduled to be five consecutive nights of DJing across three countries, (although what’s scheduled to happen and what actually ends up happening are often two very different things!) It kicked off with my first visit to Retrospect at Po Na Na in Bristol, another presentation from the highly active Ice Cold Parties organisation. All Ice Cold’s events are musically themed, and this one was all about R&B and hip hop revivals. I took over from Brother Nick at midnight, and it was quite fulfilling to be able to construct a set almost entirely of favourite revivals. It didn’t take long for the five-night run to be interrupted. I’d been scheduled to play Love Dough’s event in Leeds on Thursday night, but this was cancelled on the day itself for various administrative reasons. This left me with my first Thursday night off for 24 weeks. A bit of a shock to the system, as my body is now instinctively tuned in to heading towards the door at this time of the week, but I resisted the temptation and enjoyed an unexpected night in with Wifey. The remainder of the week required some careful logistical planning. Over the next three nights, I had gigs in Vilnius, Lithuania, Limerick, Ireland and Chelmsford, Essex. As I wouldn’t have time to return home in between, I had to have everything I needed for all three as I set off on Friday lunchtime, mindful as ever of airline baggage weight restrictions. Thankfully, the Friday afternoon traffic was kind to me and I arrived at Gatwick Airport in good time for my 5.10pm Air Baltic flight to Vilnius. My ongoing status as Britain’s Unluckiest Traveller was quickly re-affirmed as the airline told me there was a four-hour delay to my flight, (the only one on the entire board delayed by anything more than an hour – of course!) apparently due to adverse weather conditions delaying the inbound flight. This created major problems. It meant the flight wouldn’t get going before 9pm, and given the two-hour time difference with Vilnius, wouldn’t arrive there until 2am. I called promoter Raimis to discuss the problem, but he seemed to think as long as it was no later than this, we should still be able to make it work.
'Vilnius' After an eternity of waiting, we finally got going, and I descended into a cold and fog-bound Vilnius at 2. I was immediately whisked into a fast car and hurtled towards the city centre. Incredibly, we were at the club within ten minutes. With no time to go to the hotel, we humped my suitcase into the DJ booth and I quickly changed in a back room before diving straight on the decks, (where the resident DJ was playing house and trance, having run out of hip hop records long before!) Club Connect was an airy and spacious spot with a stunning sound system, and my introduction was well-received by a crowd who had clearly been waiting in anticipation. I played til around 4.10, delivering a couple of encore tracks, (including Pussycat Dolls which, it turns out, is just becoming a big radio hit in Lithuania,) but the crowd had thinned out considerably by then, and it was clear that my post-peak set time had been too late to get the most out of the night. The club seemed keen to get me back next year, though, when Air Baltic will not be an option! After drinking a couple of neat Russian vodkas, (it would have been rude not to!,) my hosts insisted I downed a couple of rums too. I finally checked into my hotel room a little before 6am and crashed out immediately, waking to the sound of Raimis’ phone call at 12.30, feeling fragile and hung over. Raimis and his girl took me to a diner for breakfast/ lunch, which was my only chance to catch the flavour of the city.
'Breakfast in Vilnius' Lithuania’s population is only 3.5 million, with around half a million in Vilnius, giving it a laid-back, almost village-like feel. After dropping me at the airport, Raimis and his girl announced they planned to go back to bed, which seemed like a very sensible plan. I was mighty relieved Air Baltic were on-schedule this time, as I had just enough time to grab my car at Gatwick Airport and hurtle round the M25 to the in-laws’ house in Middlesex, where Parveen was waiting to deliver me to Heathrow ready for my 7.45pm Aer Lingus flight to Shannon, Ireland. If air delays don’t get you, road delays just might. For some reason, the A312 link with the M4 was so jammed up it had become a giant two-lane car park, and I watched in horror as the minutes ticked away and we continued to go nowhere. By the time I’d finally sprinted into Terminal 1 Departures, it was five minutes after the airline’s official 45-minute cut-off point. I approached the ticket desk to plead for them to let me on, and prayed I wouldn’t get a stone-faced bastard at the tail end of a bad day! Thankfully, I got a very helpful girl who said if I ran to the departure gate with my luggage, I should just about make it. I just did – the last passenger to board. All credit to Aer Lingus for such a flexible approach. If that had been Ryanair, I wouldn’t have had a hope in Hell! I was collected at Shannon by Johnny, the DJ from the R&B section of the Trinity Rooms in Limerick, 20 minutes away. He’d been drafted in to the main room that night to cover the regular guy, so in turn, I was covering him. Limerick was lively and bustling, and was a far cry from the miserable, rain-soaked place depicted in ‘Angela’s Ashes’! It was similar in feel to Dublin, with half the streets seemingly sharing the same names.
'Trinity Rooms, Limerick' The Trinity Rooms is the main venue in town, holding several hundred people across three rooms and a big open-air courtyard where live music takes place. My room suddenly exploded into life at midnight, and for the next two and a half hours, the place was rammed and jumping. It ended up being a hugely enjoyable set, my DVD on continuously looped playback on the big screen. After getting hammered the previous night, I’d vowed to avoid drinking, but it’s very hard to say no to Irish hospitality, and I’d soon used up several of my drinks tokens. I spent the night in a trendy hotel suite used by Trevor Nelson on his visit to the club the previous year. Well, if it’s good enough for Trevor… Sunday 13th involved my third consecutive night of DJing in a first-time location, in this case, Chelmsford in Essex. Parveen picked me up from Heathrow mid-afternoon, and I spent the next few hours chilling at the in-laws’ before hitting the M25 in the evening. The occasion was the birthday party of Lee Cocker, the guy who puts together this website, and he’d commandeered part of the regular Chocolate Sundae event at Lloyds No. 1 Bar for the night. I was DJing alongside Essex don Lil Chris, whose site Lee also maintains.
'Lee's birthday crew' Lloyds has a spacious, open layout, with the DJ booth on a balcony overlooking the assembled drinkers. Unfortunately, there was no monitor booth up there, meaning that to DJ, you have to strain to hear the music from the speakers down below, which sounds muffled and distorted from that point. I felt some of my mixes had suffered as a result, but I was happy to be told by Lee and his crew that it had all sounded fine. Maybe they were just being polite? I was back on the DJing trail on Thursday 17th with G’s, my local joint in Bicester. This turned out to be more interesting than the average night due to a Breast Cancer Awareness campaign that was being run in association with Oxford station Fox FM, (for which I worked many years ago.) The gimmicky part of it involved girls bringing up their bras and putting them into a prize draw, making this the first, and quite probably the only time that girls will throw underwear at me as I’ve performed. The following day involved my third consecutive Friday of DJing in Europe. The hat trick was completed with a debut visit to Aarhus, Denmark’s second city. A combination of Ryanair and Stansted Airport are never my ideal first choices, but when sometimes it’s the only way. The trek around the northern part of the M25 during Friday rush hour was sheer hell! Nevertheless, I’d left myself just enough time to avoid being refused boarding.
'MD and residents at Paradis, Arhus'
I’d always assumed the Spanish and the Greeks to party the latest in Europe. It seems the Danish can join the list. The spot I was playing, Paradis, is an infamous late-night hang-out, and I was told not to expect things to get get going any time before 3am. It was midnight by the time I’d got to the city, (and below freezing,) and with less than 12 hours before my return flight, getting a hotel seemed pointless, so after a couple of hours’ rest on resident DJ Nick’s couch, I got to the club, situated on the top floor of a grim looking warehouse building, at around 3.30. It was still half empty, but suddenly, at 5am, the crowds descended and the place quickly became rammed and buzzing. Nick explained that this is all part of the Danish culture, and is tied in with the same scenario as I’d experienced in Norway. In both countries, club drinks are so expensive that people tend to get fully tanked up at home, then hit the when they’re already drunk. I played two short sets, but it was clear this was not an R&B or hip hop crowd. Instead, Nick mixed up a vast array of sounds, largely uptempo dance, which struck the right chord. By the time the club had closed at 7, the only sensible thing was to head back to the airport ahead of my (delayed!) 10.20am flight. There was some talk of attempting an hour’s sleep, but the danger of us both oversleeping was just too great! After landing at Stansted, I bombed it round the M25 to the in-laws’ place in Middlesex, where Parveen was staying for the weekend. With a gig in London that night, it made no sense to head back home to Oxfordshire, so I spent the rest of the afternoon grabbing some highly essential sleep.
The venue for Saturday night was Wax, a basement spot right next door to the Kiss FM studios in Winsley Street. It’s technically a bar, but is so expansive it’s actually bigger than many clubs. Culturally, it’s the dead opposite of the Denmark joint. Here, people start drinking as early as 5pm, so by the time I took over from former Westwood sidekick LJ Blendz at midnight, everyone was properly fired up to party. It was a mainstream crowd, so the selection took some thinking about, but I appeared to get it right, and the dancefloor stayed full right to the end. Certain aspects of the DJing game can really try the patience – particularly the radio side of things. Having made my first forays into the world of book writing this year, however, it’s clear that this particular field is even more drawn-out! I completed the manuscript for my book, ‘Tales From The Flipside’ back in the Summer, by which time I’d already spent 18 months working on it. It’s clear that this is nothing unusual, however, first-time authors often taking as long as five years to get their work on to the market. On Thursday 24th, I headed to an Italian restaurant in Soho, London, for a lunchtime meeting with a potential publisher. All went well, so before long I should hopefully have some news about when my debut opus can be expected to hit the streets! I took the opportunity of being in The Smoke to immerse myself in HMV Oxford Street, where the selection of DVDs is so expansive you can easily spend a couple of hours being dazzled by it all. It took some effort to finally drag myself away for my regular DJ set at G’s. The UK’s weather situation was looking decidedly dodgy by Friday night. Thankfully, the A34 route down to Winchester was clear of all but a a bit of sleet, faring much better than the many other parts which had been cut off by snow. I linked up with Southampton don DJ Flash for a B&S mag night at Molokos, otherwise known simply as ‘The Vodka Bar’. Bizarrely, the DJ booth was situated halfway up the metal stairs dividing the two levels, making it hard to gauge the crowd … although there was a constant ‘fan club’ of girls dancing on the gantry directly in front, as the Gallery pictures show! Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, with the exception of three rude women who came storming up to the DJ booth in the middle of Sean Paul, snorting ‘this music’s crap. We’re leaving’. The ‘we’re leaving’ part of the sentence was especially welcome. At 2am, I got a text from my brother-in-law, saying my wife had just returned to his place from her works Christmas party, drunk and smelling of booze and fags. No change there, then. Saturday night saw my monthly session at The Bridge in Oxford – the last before my spot there on New Year’s Eve. This was the weekend when the UK’s newly-relaxed laws on alcohol licencing kicked in, and The Bridge was one of many venues to take advantage of it by staying open for an extra hour. Oxford’s nightlife rulings have always been notoriously Draconian, the council insisting all venues close by 2am. 3 seems a much more sensible time for a Saturday night – even if the resulting five-hour shift it now imposes on me is a little knackering!
'Portmeirion tower'
As soon as I got up on Sunday, Parveen and myself headed off for a quick two-day break in North Wales. Perhaps not the best time of year for it, but thankfully, the hazardous weather which had gripped that part of the world had largely cleared by the time we got there – even though we narrowly missed the blizzard on the way back in which motorists had been abandoning their cars at the roadside – forget that! The highlight was visiting Portmeirion, the surreal ornamental village where the cult 60s TV programme ‘The Prisoner’ was filmed. It looks just the same 40 years on. … and that was November. Where is 2005 going?! Diary Archive 2007 2006 2005
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